Tenuto
by SombraAlma
Summary: Claire, slight Sawyer/Claire, mentions of Charlie/Claire and Sawyer/Kate. "She watches all of them shuffle off to abandoned houses and thinks, yes, a disaster happened here."


Title: Tenuto  
Rating: PG-13  
Disclaimer: Don't own them; just borrowing.  
Spoilers: Through 4.02  
Summary: Claire, slight Sawyer/Claire, mentions of Charlie/Claire and Sawyer/Kate. _She watches all of them shuffle off to abandoned houses and thinks, yes, a disaster happened here._  
Note: This got into my head after watching 4.02 and wouldn't leave. I don't know. It's different, for me.

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_tenuto[in music held; i.e., touch on a note slightly longer than usual, but without generally altering the note's value_

_-----_

Six more are gone.

Well, not gone like anything else on this island has been gone. Not gone like missing or taken or dead or buried or _drowned_. Just, _gone_, with the whirring of helicopter blades and the promise of _home_ and no promises, this time, that they'll be back.

Claire guesses that's fair. She wouldn't promise to return, either. (And then she realizes that makes her selfish, and makes _them_ selfish, and there's a flash of anger. But understood all the same.)

So, gone.

She thinks, somewhere, someone must still have the manifest. There would be one thin pencil line through each of the original dead (and the not-dead, too, before they'd known) and she remembers the first funeral of too many, bodies burned instead of buried. She doesn't know what she'd do with the manifest now. More lines through more names, but what do you do with people who have just disappeared? What do you do with a boy, a vision, a ghost? What do you do with people who fly away on helicopters and don't look back?

She's glad she has no idea where the manifest is, anymore.

But at least, she thinks, it would give her something to do.

After the helicopters and the guns and the six are gone, there's nothing really to do. (Well, Locke has plans, but Locke always has plans. And he was wrong about Ben and Ben shot the girl, and people are having trust issues with that. Surprise, surprise.)

She thinks all of them, to an outsider's view, would look a bit like ghosts, wandering through the barracks, claiming houses and salvaging supplies and huddling together like the shellshocked victims of a war or some natural disaster.

What had their disaster been? She can't remember, explicitly, how it started. But she watches all of them shuffle off to abandoned houses and thinks, yes, a disaster happened here.

She chooses a small house with flowered curtains at the windows. There's a flash of memory, of hanging something similar in hers and Thomas' apartment, and she clutches Aaron closer to her chest and thinks if they stay here for any length of time she'll take these curtains down.

But for now, it's something. It's a dry place to let Aaron sleep; there's a bed and, strangely, food left in the refrigerator, even a bathtub and shower. If she hadn't spent the past three months wearing dead women's clothing, she'd feel uneasy about just taking over someone else's house. But it's necessary now and she takes without thinking.

She lays the sleeping Aaron on the bed, propped with pillows, and wanders into the bathroom, turns on the water in the tub. But then she's not used to _not_ having him within arm's reach at all times, so she hurries back into the bedroom, scoops him up again, murmuring an apology for leaving him alone. When he wails in protest at being woken, she tries to remember the lullaby Charlie used to sing to him. But either she's got the words wrong or it's not the same in her voice, and she has to give up and fall back on _catch a falling star and put it in your pocket_. It sounds hollow to her, her own voice coming from far away, and Aaron wails harder.

She sits on the closed toilet seat with him cradled to her chest, rocking her body back and forth to the rhythm of the song she's no longer singing, and now they're both crying. She has her face pressed to the top of Aaron's downy head, and only lifts it when she hears a clearing of the throat coming from the doorway.

"Oh. Oh. Hey, Mamacita." Sawyer is in the doorway, suddenly, and Claire looks at him, dumbfounded, a bit frightened that she hadn't heard him enter the house. He looks just as uncomfortable, shuffling his feet and looking anywhere but at her and the tears that are still falling. "Um, I just...I heard the...your baby...cryin'. Thought ya might..." Here he thrusts his arms out, a blanket crumpled in his hands. "Thought he might be...cold."

She wipes her eyes and sniffles, speaks over the sound of Aaron's cries, which have lessened slightly. "Oh, okay...Thanks, Sawyer." What else could she say? She remembers another time that seems like years ago, another blanket, and she almost smiles. Almost.

He nods and places the blanket on the counter, patting it awkwardly. "Yeah. Um...you need anythin'...anythin' else?"

Aaron is just whimpering now, and Claire looks at the tub, filling with steaming water. She looks at Sawyer, recalls Hurley pulling him aside before the helicopters left. They'd whispered together for a short time, then both looked at her, and she wonders if Hurley had put him up to this. She's surprised to find she doesn't care, one way or the other. She stands then, shuffles over to Sawyer who's still leaning against the doorframe. "Could you take him? Just for a little while, I was going to..." She motions with one hand to the tub.

"I...I don't know, Mamacita..." He looks caught, deer in the headlights expression. "What if he..."

She shakes her head, having made her decision. "He'll be fine." She places the baby in Sawyer's arms. "He'll probably go to sleep." She leans forward, kisses Aaron's forehead. "I don't want him to be alone."

Sawyer nods then, holding the baby gingerly as if he expects him to grow two heads and fangs once they leave Claire's presence. In the end, she has to gently push him out of the bathroom so she can close the door and undress.

The bathwater is warm and soothing, and she sinks down further so her chin is just beneath the surface. She can almost close her eyes and imagine _home_ – but then what comes to her mind instead is water covering her mouth, nose, eyes. Flailing, gasping, drowning.

Dying.

She sits up suddenly, heart pounding, his name a silent whisper on her lips.

Washing herself quickly, she gets out of the tub as soon as she can, pulling the plug and watching as the water swirls down the drain.

Gone.

She finally breathes out.

Dressed again, calmer on the outside if not otherwise, she ventures out of the bathroom towards the sound of a quiet voice. She pauses in the doorway of the living room, her eyes falling on Sawyer, Aaron on his lap. He's reading to the sleeping baby, and upon closer inspection she sees the book is Stephen King's _Carrie_. She ignores the inappropriateness of the selection and listens to the cadence of his voice, instead, the soft Southern drawl belying the spookiness of the storyline.

He looks up, sheepish, when the couch sinks slightly as she sits next to them, but she shakes her head, _keep going_ in her eyes. And he does, his voice a rolling rhythm that lulls her, finally, and the next thing she knows she's being lifted in two strong arms, being carried and then laid down on the bed, Aaron tucked in beside her. She barely stirs, only to wrap an arm protectively around her son, and she's already drifting back to sleep as the bed dips with his weight beside her.

-----

His arm is heavy on her as she eases awake, taking a few moments to remember where she is. And then she feels something else, something hard against the back of her thigh, and she keeps perfectly still, recalling Thomas sometimes waking like this, not wanting to embarrass Sawyer, but not wanting him to think he can try anything with her, either.

She does have to move then, because her arm's asleep, and he mumbles and mutters and moves against her. "Mornin', Freckles..." he growls foggily, almost sensually, into her hair, and while she should feel bad about the slip, she can't – she knows all too well the seconds between sleep and wakefulness and the _wishing_, the hoping it had all been a nightmare. (It had been, hadn't it? She's wishing too, now, and if she were to utter a name it wouldn't be Sawyer's.)

And she feels the exact second he wakes fully, because his entire body stiffens; he pulls his arm away from her, shifts his hips away, cursing angrily to himself. She feels him roll away and get off the bed, stumbling towards the bathroom.

It's not until she hears the shower running that she gets up, too, holding a cooing Aaron on her hip as she drags her fingers through her tangled hair, frowning at their reflections in the bedroom mirror. His hair is blond, his eyes a pale blue, and while the features are _hers_, too, all she sees is Charlie.

She startles when she hears the shower turn off, presses the heel of her hand to her burning eyes before running her fingers through her hair once more. Shifting Aaron on her hip, she hurries out of the dark house with the flowered curtains, into the bright sunlight.

Yes, a disaster happened here.

-----

_ and what i want to know is__  
how do you like your blueeyed boy  
Mister Death_  
-e.e. cummings


End file.
